BUCK: One of the favorite tactics of leftists out there is to either make up a conversation with their children… They do this on Twitter. They’ll say, “My 9-year-old said that the Republicans’ refusal to go along with the change in the filibuster…”

CLAY: (chuckling) That’s right.

BUCK: Yeah. I’m pretty sure your 9-year-old did not say that, Blue Check Writer for the Washington Post. But they also like to use children to make their political points and here’s an example of that. It’s a 12-year-old reading a letter. This was put on CNN.

GIRL: I would like to encourage the requirement of masks at school in Duval County. I’m so worried that if masks are not required, my brother could go to school one day and the next be dying in the hospital.

BOY: At school I wear two masks, because I want to make sure I don’t get sick.

GIRL: It’s okay to have your own opinions. It’s, like, you can think what you want to think. But also, the… These masks have proven that they’re saving — that they are saving people.

BUCK: So I just want to be very clear here, Clay, because Democrats and the left — because they’re shameless and have no principles — they love to use children as political land mines in a sense, right? They push them forward to carry the message and when you start to criticize the message, they say, “Why are you criticizing the children?” They did that with Greta Thunberg if you remember, the 16-year-old.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Look, kids should not be used as political props in this way. The adults who do so are odious. CNN putting them on TV is appalling. I’m not criticizing children. I’m criticizing adults who think that I should give a you-know-what what a 12-year-old thinks of mask policy, Clay. But you’re actually dealing with mask policy when it comes to kids right now.

CLAY: Yeah. Those were kids, by the way, in Jacksonville, Florida, where Ron DeSantis is and kids going back. My kids return to school tomorrow. So I have a first grader and I have a fifth grader, two elementary school kids. I know some of you out there are saying, “What?” You’re checking your phones right now. You’re saying, “Wait a minute. It’s gonna be August 6th.”

Yeah, we start early in many different parts of the South. We get out early. They get out in May — early May, relatively speaking — and my kids are going back. I’ll be walking them to school tomorrow, and I’m genuinely curious to see. There’s no mask mandate in the public school where my kids are going. But in Nashville — which is where I live a little bit north of where we are now — they do have mask mandates at some schools.

And so I know there are a lot of parents out there right now — and I’ve hinted at this before, Buck, because I think it’s going to turn into a monster battle to see what parents do, ’cause last year a lot of parents… I’ll put myself in this category, Buck. We were just excited to have our kids in school and so they had to wear masks but they got out in March. It had been months.

BUCK: We’ve talked about it. Can I just say, Clay, I worry. I’ve been so disappointed at how much most of America —

CLAY: Accept.

BUCK: — has been willing to go along with here and I’m with you, man. I want to see angry moms out there, but I think a lot of them even in places they’re just gonna say, “It’s just a mask.” This is what I’m talking about. “It’s just this thing.” I don’t know if people are angry enough over this. They’re much angrier about vaccine mandates than they were mask mandates.

CLAY: Yeah, but I think there’s something about the kids because we know the data. We’re gonna talk, by the way, to Alex Berenson in the third hour. He’s gonna be in studio with us here in New York and I’m excited to talk with him about this. But the data is also clear about kids, despite what that 12-year-old was saying, that CNN was falling in love with it.

BUCK: Isn’t that appalling? Can we just for a second…? CNN puts 12-year-olds making the case that they want made on TV? What are we supposed to do with that? How about a 5-year-old, CNN? Do you want to have a kid that can’t even read and write yet telling us what should happen with the masks? But you know what the answer is? You and I right now, there are people that are probably — Media Matters or whatever — saying, “Clay Travis and Buck Sexton trashing children over mask mandates!”

CLAY: (chuckling)

BUCK: That’s what they love to do.

CLAY: Yeah. Well, I’m sure that headline will exist somewhere. But I do think that there are… Because, again, last year it was just, “Hey, I just want my kids to be in school. This year I want my kids to be in school and I want everything to be 100% normal, ’cause that’s what the science tells me should be the case. Teachers, if you’re terrified get the vaccine.

Kids are not primary spreaders. The virus never has spread abundantly through kids. That’s one of the good things about the data that it tells us about covid since last year. And we know that teachers aren’t under particular risk. But I think there are a lot of parents like me who are gonna be taking their kids to school in the next few days — and I’m gonna be doing it tomorrow — that are genuinely curious to see, does it feel normal again or are we still kind of under the scope and the ambit and the control of this mask-policing nonsense?

I think it’s a really fascinating position as we move forward.